Ever wonder what it's like to be abducted by aliens? To find out, tune in to Taken, Steven Spielberg's 10-episode reality-based miniseries. Airing on the Sci Fi Channel in December and February, the docudrama traces the effects of extraterrestrial snatchings on three American families. To bring the show's otherworldly craft down to Earth, Spielberg tapped production designer Chris Gorak. The ships' creator gives us a peek under the hood.

Courtesy of Chris Gorak

1) The first Photoshop images of the spaceships were inspired by stereotypical flying saucers. Gorak's team added textures from photographs of human cells and telescopic shots of Earth. "We wanted this unexplainable quality of energy frozen into a disc," he says.

2) Spielberg weighed in, steering the designers toward a mechanical look. "It was important to him that the spaceships seem crafted by aliens and not magically formed by some power that we couldn't possibly understand."